Opposition presidential candidate Yashwant Sinha on Monday filed his nomination papers for the July 18 election, with a host of leaders including Rahul Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Akhilesh Yadav and Farooq Abdullah accompanying him.
Without opposing the EC's decision to hold a five-phased general election, Left parties on Monday said some parties would find it difficult to sustain their campaigns in certain states and expressed the view that a two-phase election in West Bengal would have been better.
The anti-Congress feeling is so sharp that when General Secretary Prakash Karat proposed to the all-powerful Politburo that for the 2009 election the party's policy should be 'Defeat BJP, Reject Congress', the Politburo sent back the revised slogan of 'Defeat BJP, Defeat Congress.'
Against the backdrop of Kerala's appetite for commonsense, it was assumed that this controversy would pass. Respect for rationalism and scientific outlook is strong in the state despite political forces gnawing at it for their own goals, observes Shyam G Menon.
Apart from the two major parties (Cong: 98; BJP: 67) the Bahujan Samaj Party is leading in four seats, while the Janata Dal-United and the Communist Party of India-Marxist are ahead in one each.
The Communist Party of India - Marxist is in favour of mounting diplomatic pressure on Bangladesh to destroy camps of North-East based militant outfits in that country. Party general secretary Prakash Karat told a press conference that the militant camps present in Bangladesh should be destroyed and that "will be possible only by mounting diplomatic pressure." He expressedg grave concern over large-scale infiltration from neighbouring Bangladesh.
Wayanad will continue to support Rahul but not to the same extent as in 2019, when his margin of victory had been enormous. Articulate, to the point and speaking in fluent Malayalam, CPI's Annie Raja, had the people who gathered to see her, listening in rapt attention, notes Shyam G Menon.
Virtually rejecting Trinamool Congress' appeal to support a no-confidence motion to be brought by it, Communist Party of India-Marxist said such a move would only help the government cover up all its "wrong" policies.
The Kerala state advocate general, C.P.Sudhakara Prasad, has given his opinion in the multi-crore corruption case involving the Communist Party of India-Marxist state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and has opined that the prosecution need not take any action against the former state electricity minister.
After the controversy raised by the Trinamool Congress that his political affiliation was with the Communist Party of India-Marxist and he could not be a brand ambassador of the Election Commission, former India captain Sourav Ganguly has cried off.
The Left parties will greet visiting US President Barack Obama on Monday with protests but their MPs, barring the Forward Bloc (which has two MPs in the Lok Sabha and one in the Rajya Sabha), will listen to him when he addresses Parliament.
The Central Bureau of Investigation is conducting searches at the home of Supreme Court lawyer Indira Jaising -- who served as additional solicitor general during UPA 2 -- and the offices of Lawyers Collective, an NGO run by her husband lawyer Anand Grover, officials said.
While the Kerala chief minister has not yet shown any sign of accepting the party's line on the SNC Lavalin corruption case -- where Vijayan has been termed an accused by the CBI -- the politburo will try to maintain a balance between the two factions in a last-ditch effort.
CPI-M veteran Pinarayi Vijayan, who led the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to an unprecedented consecutive victory in the April 6 assembly polls, on Thursday took oath as chief minister of Kerala for the second time along with 20 ministers.
In an exclusive column to Rediff.com, CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat explains what is wrong with the Union Budget 2011-12 that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented in Parliament on Monday.
If political analysts and party insiders are to be believed, the CPI-M would soon be divided into two easily identifiable groups: Pro-Prakash Karat and anti-Karat. "Some veteran party members are only awaiting the trust vote result. Should the United Progressive Alliance government win, CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat and his team will be in for some rude shocks," say party insiders.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist on Tuesday categorically ruled out forging an alliance or a united front with the Congress in future.
Opposition leaders and activists hit out at the Centre after the death of Jesuit priest and activist Stan Swamy on Monday, saying it should be held accountable for the "ruthless" and "inhuman treatment" meted out to the 84-year-old who was suffering from multiple ailments and awaiting bail on medical grounds.
Why weren't the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra and Telangana -- all of which have borders with Karnataka -- not invited to Saturday's swearing-in ceremony, asks Shyam G Menon.
The government had earlier this week briefed top BJP leadership on the same foreign policy issues.
While Prakash Karat was re-elected as the general secretary of the CPI-M, veteran leaders Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet will no longer be part of the party's politburo, but will stay on as senior figureheads. West Bengal ministers Nirupam Sen and Mohammed Amin, and Kerala home and tourism minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan are the new members in the politburo.
'We demand immediate release of all public representatives of mainstream political parties and innocent citizens,' the resolution said.
Former Supreme Court judge Justice V R Krishna Iyer, who had launched a scathing attack on Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, on Monday sent an apology letter to him.
He was administered the oath of office by Governor Rajendra Arlekar at the Raj Bhavan in Patna.
It is spring in Bengal, yet the scorching afternoon sun unleashed its unbearable heat as rediff.com decided to walk around Barrackpore, a sub-division under North 24 Parganas in West Bengal.
Stating that the Trinamool Congress was ready to contest all the 42 seats in West Bengal, party chief Mamata Banerjee on Monday said that she was prepared to hold talks with those who really wanted to defeat the ruling Communist Party of India Marxist.In an obvious reference to the Congress, Banerjee told the Trinamool Congress General Council meeting in Kolkata, "We are the principal opposition party and nobody should be allowed to say that we refused their offer."
O'Brien had called a press conference on Saturday in which he showed two videos of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's speeches and four photographs, including one that showed Singh offering sweet to Karat.
According to the sources, former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar, ex-Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, CPI national secretary D Raja, Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh leader and grandson of Dr BR Ambedkar, Prakash, and retired diplomat Gopal Krishna Gandhi are some of the probable contenders whose names the Opposition parties are considering.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Monday said it wanted a common approach by political parties when the Indo-US nuclear deal comes up for discussion in Parliament during the winter session.
"We are surprised to see the observation of the apex court. We consider right to organise peaceful protest as a basic right of political parties and citizens. Judicial encroachment is uncalled for," party general secretary Prakash Karat said.
The group, led by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and state secretary Biman Bose, feels the "timing of the withdrawal" in July 2008 was "wrong". The group will seek a review of this decision in the forthcoming extended Central Committee meeting of the party in Vijayawada in August and also question other decisions of the party that are alleged to have led to the debacle in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
Perhaps sensing mid-term polls, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has reinstated Kerala Chief Minister V S Achutanandhan and the party state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan in the politburo
Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who has always played a key role in defusing tensions with the Left, were also present at the crucial meeting.
The Left and SP, along with TDP, have held consultations on the issue.
Noting that the WikiLeaks cables were a 'sad and revealing' commentary of where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress have landed the country in, the CPI-M has said Americans were willing to do everything to win the trust vote during the UPA government's regime so that the nuclear deal could go through.CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat said the cables show that the Americans are keen observers of the high level of corruption that exists in India's politics.
Participating in the resumed discussion on the General Budget in the Rajya Sabha, Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Brinda Karat said the government is linking food inflation to higher purchasing power among the poor resulting from employment programmes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
A day after Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh commented on the issue of 'Sangh terror', Communist Party of India - Marixist leader Sitaram Yechury on Friday cited ideologies propounded by freedom fighters V Savarkar and B S Moonje to insist that there was nothing new in the 'violent strain' of Hindutva.
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who has so far maintained silence about his expulsion from the Communist Party of India Marxist, is planning to write a letter to party General Secretary Prakash Karat, according to sources.
'I found that the only path to fight inequality was the path of revolutionary politics,' says CPI-M Politburo member Brinda Karat.
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